Entrepreneurial Student Architects in Trondheim

At Technoport 2015's Peace, Love & Entrepreneurship session, NTNU's Stephen Wellinger showed off some of the inspirational work from NTNU's Live Studio.

We all know there's some talented researchers hidden away in the corridors of NTNU, but did you know there's some talented architects too? At Technoport 2015, NTNU's Steffen Wellinger from the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art showed off some of the student projects at the intersection of peace, love and entrepreneurship.

Watch the video here:

FRIrom at St Olav Hospital

FRIrom is a 9 square-metre wooden pavilion, located on a roof terrace of the Women and Children’s clinic at St. Olav’s Hospital here in Trondheim. FRIrom seeks to be a place with a good atmosphere, where relatives can find peace and feel safe in a vulnerable situation, a place where one can enjoy the silence and act without being restricted by the surroundings.

"After two years in use we see this tiny pavilion can change things for the better for the parents in this hospital," said Wellinger.

Piren and Bølgen

The pier is part of a larger project to energise the common area at the intersection of Kongens gate and Kjøpmannsgata. Along with the stairs, the objective was to make the Nidelva river more accessible to the public. The pier is 12 meters from the stairs and gives a whole new perspective of the river environment.

"The stairs got an honourable mention at the Trondheim Architecture Awards last year, but it was built in two weeks with scrap material," said Wellinger.

Rjukan Town Cabin

The Rjukan Town Cabin was built by 22 architect students from NTNU, and managed by the student group Rallar Arkitekter. The pavilion was designed as a new and different place to meet for the population of Rjukan. The pavilion is open for everyone at every hour of the day, and contains an exhibition with pictures of Rjukan from the past and present. The pavilion was built in only two weeks, but the preparations lasted for ten months.

"With this project, entrepreneurship came into the equation as the students had to deal with the municipality and funding, along with a more complex construction. As an observer from the outside, I saw this as their awakening. The students found out there was a public interest, a user, for this kind of project. What they built in Rjukan meant something to the people," said Wellinger.

Tagpuro Bus Shelter & Watchtower

Tagpuro is a small village that lies 16 km north of Tacloban, a city devestated by typhoon Haiyan in November 2013.

In collaboration with the orphanage Streetlight, the students Kristin Solhaug Næss, Anders Gunleiksrud, John Haddal Mork and Sebastian Østlie undertook a mapping of Tagpuro. The process of mapping grew into a physical project built together with the local residents.

Through an ongoing dialog with the council the idea of an information board with a roof soon developed into a “waiting shed” combined with an outpost above. It´s common for the barangays (villages) of the area to have such a building for local security, often staffed by local volunteers serving as a neighbourhood watch.

"This is collaborative intelligence, discussing iterative architecture through models. It wasn’t about transferring knowledge from Norway to the Philippines, it was about creating something together," said Wellinger.